


Appendix A: Worldbuilding for "With Careful Hands"

by Laura JV (jacquez)



Series: The spear in your heart [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Other, Worldbuilding, appendix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-05 01:51:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16358375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquez/pseuds/Laura%20JV
Summary: Contains mild spoilers for the story. If you are unfamiliar with the planet Vulcan, you may wish to read the primer section before reading "With Careful Hands". The primer does not contain spoilers.





	Appendix A: Worldbuilding for "With Careful Hands"

Basingstoke and I were discussing Star Trek-Sherlock Holmes fusion universes, and she said:

> _Tired: Sherlock is Vulcan_
> 
> _Wired: Sherlock is Romulan_
> 
> _Inspired: John is Vulcan_
> 
>  
> 
> _Picture John all quiet and vegetarian and meditating really really hard but this is AOS and the destruction of Vulcan gave him hella PTSD_
> 
>  

How do you leave a prompt like that on the floor? You don't.

 

 **Vulcan primer, for those who do not know Star Trek:** The _Star Trek_ Prime timeline is the one of the original television series (TOS). The Alternate timeline, that of the recent movies (AOS), involves the destruction of the planet Vulcan by the terrorist Romulan ship _Narada_.

 

Vulcans follow a philosophy of nonviolence and emotional control, developed by the philosopher Surak. They have cultural remnants of an older, extremely violent, way of life; among other things, they routinely learn a set of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat methods that include ways to kill. In the TOS episode "Journey to Babel," Spock's father Sarek was accused of using the Vulcan technique _tal shaya_ to commit murder.

 

Vulcans are telepaths, and can form permanent mental links with one another. They are usually bonded as children, because the adult mating cycle, _pon farr_ , can be fatal unless alleviated by mating or combat. The marriage ritual is _koon-ut-kali-fee_ : marriage or challenge. The weapons _lirpa_ and _ahn woon_ are traditional in challenge combat, which is to the death. The _ahn woon_ is a long, flexible strip of leather with metal weights on the ends, and is used to kill by strangulation. An adult male Vulcan might reasonably possess one, especially if it is a clan heirloom, and he would certainly know how to use one, although the challenge is rare. In the Prime timeline, Spock's wife T'Pring called the challenge rather than consummate the marriage.

 

Vulcans, as a species, maintain a certain telepathic awareness of other Vulcans, and can sense mass deaths. When the _USS Intrepid_ was destroyed in the Prime universe, Spock sensed the deaths of the 400 Vulcans on board. Because of this link, Vulcans who survived the Destruction all have some degree of traumatic psychic damage.

 

 **Vulcan, after the Destruction:** In this version of the universe, adult Vulcan residents who survived were mostly offplanet for professional or educational reasons. They are about 60% male, because pregnant and breastfeeding people were much more likely to be on-planet. They are almost entirely above the age of 25 standard and below the age of 150. There are about 30,000 of these individuals, and they are largely scientists, engineers, and physicians, with small but notable percentages being diplomats, architects, or touring musicians.

 

About 10,000 individuals were both evacuated from Vulcan and survived the _Narada_ 's attacks on rescue vessels, and those individuals are overwhelmingly orphaned children under the age of 15, because Vulcans prioritized the evacuation of children. Only about 1,000 of these evacuees are adults, most of them people who were providing professional care to the children, or breastfeeding parents of infants.

 

There are Vulcan colony worlds with a total population of approx. 200 million people. New Vulcan is a small colony that has become the new political and cultural center of the Vulcan diaspora.

 

 **Housing and income:** Federation citizens all receive a basic income in credits, plus designated food credits and housing credits. Many planets offer what is called "basic housing", which costs exactly one's housing credits. Basic housing has accessibility and maintenance requirements that are more stringently enforced than those for private housing, which is why Baker Street has a lift for accessibility but has not had its stairs widened to accommodate hoverchairs.

 

On Earth, some people live in basic housing for years, but most people use it only temporarily (as young adults, during periods of transition, etc.). Basic housing in London tends to be well-maintained but impersonal and isolating, with no communal spaces, minimal green space, and rapid turnover in residents.

 

On Vulcan before the Destruction, basic housing was the norm in cities; most people either lived in basic housing or in a larger home owned by their clan (usually multi-family and multi-generational). Very prominent people might have single-family residences, although these were also clan-owned; there was no single-individual private real estate on Vulcan. Basic housing had small apartments and large, pleasant communal spaces, including community kitchens where traditional meals could be made for up to fifty people at one time. Resident turnover was generally low, and adult children might wait until a nearby unit was available to move out of their parents' apartment, although they might join a cooking-group consisting of their peers once they reached late adolescence, and take meals with their group rather than with their parents.

 

John and Sherlock are combining their housing credits and some of their income in order to afford Baker Street. At the start of the story, John is living on his basic income plus a special allowance to Vulcan residents who survived the planet's destruction; Sherlock has additional income from his work at FedMed and as a detective.

 

 **Andorians:** I am extrapolating wildly from information on Memory Alpha and Memory Beta. I have neither seen all the Star Trek canon on Andorians (I am mostly familiar with TOS/TNG/DS9 canon), nor read all the novels that deal with them. Since the canon/secondary canon is somewhat inconsistent, I've felt very free to make them function as I like for this story. Andorian antennae are sensory organs, capable of detecting certain sounds out of the range of human hearing, as well as a number of other types of energy. Their language contains sounds humans cannot hear, which I have divided into tones, undertones, harmonics, and subharmonics, all of which can add layers of meaning to their speech. Andorians have weak telepathic abilities, and can use them to influence or manipulate others, although this is considered unethical. John can hear almost all of the Andorian sounds that humans cannot, and is a powerful telepath with terrible shields, which makes him very dangerous to be around if you're an Andorian trying to keep things secret.

 

Information on Andorian gender and sexuality is in Appendix B.


End file.
